


Such A Depressing Box of Tapes

by sunspot (unavoidedcrisis)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Episode: s03e11 Mystery Spot, Inspired by Fanart, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 03:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/pseuds/sunspot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean dies on a Wednesday and doesn't come back. Relearning to live after that is a struggle for Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Such A Depressing Box of Tapes

**Author's Note:**

> Written to go with [this art](http://badbastion.livejournal.com/11970.html), 'cause there ain't no party like a badbastion livestream fandom party. (art nsfw!)

Sam wakes up two minutes before the alarm and turns it off before it can blare in his ear. He can't stand hearing the classic rock every morning, but he tunes to the classic rock radio station first thing in every new motel room, right after he locks the door and remembers how to breathe again.

It's been forty-one days since Dean died for the last time. Forty-one days since Sam started his search for the Trickster. That was forty nights of going to bed alone, forty mornings of waking up alone. Forty-one days of being in the Impala alone, and forty-one days for the smell of Dean to fade from the interior of the car and from Sam's memory.

"S'nice car," some guy says, nodding to Sam when he stops for gas.

"Yeah," Sam says tightly.

"Sixty-nine, right?"

"Sixty-seven," Sam tells him, and he thinks it comes out more sharply than he's ever spoken to anyone before.

If it was, the guy doesn't notice. "Right on. Take care of her, huh, bud?"

Sam pays for the gas in cash, like always, and gets behind the wheel again. And, as always, he has to take a second to remember how to breathe without Dean. It's a constant relearning process. Every event is something he has to figure out how to do all over again because he's not used to doing it alone.

He starts driving again, pulling out onto the interstate, when he realizes how quiet everything is. Not the car, the car sounds like thunder on the pavement, but those sounds are basically part of him by this point in his life. Inside the car is too quiet. There's no joke cracking or casual bickering or obnoxiously loud music. Nothing Sam's come to associate with long, multi-state drives.

Sam rolls down the window. It might be kind of cold, but the noise from outside is enough to distract him from the quiet of the car. He won't put on any of Dean's music, and anything that's not Dean's music has no place in the Impala.

He pulls into the parking lot of a shitty motel somewhere in the west of Idaho and forgets his cell phone is in his lap when he stands up. It bounces off the floor and skitters under the passenger seat. Sam has to lean over to grope around, wishing there was more light. His hand bumps something solid wedged under the seat.

It's the goddamn box of tapes. The box that had been floating around on the floor of the car for as long as Sam can remember. It was Dad's once, then Dean's. All the classics featured in there, AC/DC, early Metallica, the entire Zeppelin collection. There was even a fucking Asia tape lurking somewhere.

Sam remembers before he has a chance to stop himself. The number of times he and Dean were messing around in the front seat -- for all Dean's worrying that Sam was going to track mud onto the mats or get monster goo on the seats, he sure didn't mind the possibility of a mess when it also involved the possibility of him getting his rocks off -- and the number of times one of them kicked over the box.

Dean always bitched and blamed Sam and his 'ridiculously long giraffe legs', but Sam would see the way he bit his lip just so when he had to lean over to pick them up, when he could feel all the little bruises Sam had kissed into his skin at once.

Sam flings the whole box into the backseat, feeling simultaneously relieved and sick when he hears the plastic crunch before the clattering tapes finally settle. He'd pick them up in the morning, or maybe never again.


End file.
